FRIENDS Set Me Up to Be Disappointed

I know life doesn't always imitate art, but...

My parents let my siblings and I watch roughly an hour of TV with them before bed most nights; I grew up on a steady stream of mid-aughts sitcoms. Scrubs, King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, Will & Grace, and yes, Friends accompany some of my more formative memories. When seasons nine and ten of Friends aired for the first time, I was nine and ten years old. I didn’t understand all the humor (which makes them interesting to watch now that I’m grown up), but I understood more than I think I should have. These shows are more like comfort food to me now, but Friends in particular is something that’s stuck around for me personally more than I anticipated.

I consider three shows to be “New York Shows,” ones that scream NYC in ways other sitcoms of the era don’t. (Had it had the same cultural windfall and staying power, I think the Michael J. Fox seasons of Spin City would also fit on this list, but I digress.) Friends, Will & Grace, and Seinfeld have the vibe of the city baked into them in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s being forced or shoved down our throats. It’s enough of a presence in the show that it’s not the kind of thing that could’ve taken place anywhere. Will & Grace was just a tick over my head at the time; aside from Karen and Jack, it felt slightly too grown up. Seinfeld was… well, it was something I’d come to “get” later. Friends, however, hit my sweet spot. The characters felt like they could be people my parents knew. Parts of the humor became my sense of humor. Lines and scenes from certain episodes are imprinted in my memory. It became one of my favorites.

I can admit that I was probably too impressionable; on the one hand, yeah it’s just TV, but on the other, the culture you consume does impact how you see the world. What you see does matter — which is a larger topic that deserves its own essay. Now that Gen Z is trying to make the 90s cool (though I doubt they ever totally were), Friends memes are everywhere. Hot takes on the show through a more current lens are also everywhere. No piece of art is without flaws, but for this purpose I’m just taking the show at face value for what it is. My point is, college kids binging the show on Netflix and my being roughly the same age as the characters were in the early seasons (yikes) is making me rethink my connection to it.

Without realizing it, Friends became aspirational for me. I thought Monica and Rachel’s apartment was so cool; I envied the mismatched furniture and art on the purple walls, the gold frame around the peephole. One of my first crushes was Matthew Perry; Chandler’s sarcasm was familiar to me and right in my wheelhouse, all the boys I had crushes on in real life were people I thought were funny. (We don’t speak of my teenage Ross phase — everyone makes mistakes, and I feel I’ve atoned for that particular sin.) I hoped Central Perk was real, that I’d have a home base of sorts to hang out at in my neighborhood. I hoped I’d become so familiar with the city that I’d know it with my eyes closed.

Having an adult life here is something I dreamed about for well over a decade, with the help of the show and my own tiny child fantasies — boosted by living so close and actually seeing the place in real life. I never expected perfection, but it shaped what I wanted. I wanted an effortlessly cool and homey apartment in Manhattan (I knew people lived in the other boroughs, but TV acts like they don’t exist; my favorite example is from Sex and the City when Miranda tells the others she and Steve are considering Brooklyn). I wanted to work someplace fun and interesting and really feel like a grownup. I wanted a group of friends who I was so close with they were more like family. I wanted to be able to hang out with them almost every day, call on them whenever I needed them, tell them everything. I wanted a cute boy to pay attention to me, to love me, to be real and super cool at the same time with me.

And now, at 28 years old with a full time job in New York City, I am let down. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration; disappointed is a more appropriate description. I still don’t feel like a real grownup — I don’t know if I ever will. Even while I’m getting more independent every day. Meeting potential partners as a disabled, queer, femme presenting millennial has been… an experience, one I have enough material to write another essay with someday. People really do think they can just say anything, it’s amazing. There is someone special, but things are… a little unorthodox at the moment (yet another topic for a future essay?). I have a job that I really, really like… but my dream of writing for some artsy but important publication and living in the East Village has been dead for a long time. I haven’t moved out of my parents’ house yet, but I’m aiming for sometime next year. I’d be more than happy and comfortable in a little studio, just as long as I can use the bathroom and shower without trouble.

The part that’s probably the most disappointing is that my social life… is basically nonexistent. The majority of my life over the last six months has been consumed by work, sleep, and almost nothing else. I don’t have the energy for socializing, not when travel takes up so much of my time. A not-small corner of my brain is still lonely, despite being way more stimulated and fulfilled than I was back in 2020. I’ve never really had the opportunity to form relationships as close as I want them to be, for various reasons. My longest lasting friendship was extremely toxic and manipulative, and I’ve never been able to let myself get that vulnerable with other people since it imploded. I don’t expect everyone to be my very best friend — not everyone is going to be my Monica or my Joey — but being scared is exhausting. I’m over it.

Your twenties are a much more unsettling time than the media makes them out to be. You don’t know who you are, you’re figuring that out. You’re doing a lot of things for the first time. You don’t get your first job and stick with it for ten years. Problems don’t solve themselves. Your core friend group doesn’t last forever; a lot of the time it’s not even a single bunch of people. Life feels dramatic, and a lot of the time you’re unstable. You’re lucky if you know what the fuck you’re doing by the time you’re 25. I did not.